title: The 12-Item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12): reliability, external validity and factor structure in the Spanish population.
abstract: The purpose of this study was to analyze the internal consistency and the external and structure validity of the 12-Item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) in the Spanish general population. A stratified sample of 1001 subjects, ages between 25 and 65 years, taken from the general Spanish population was employed. The GHQ-12 and the Inventory of Situations and Responses of Anxiety-ISRA were administered. A Cronbach's alpha of .76 (Standardized Alpha: .78) and a 3-factor structure (with oblique rotation and maximum likelihood procedure) were obtained. External validity of Factor I (Successful Coping) with the ISRA is very robust (.82; Factor II, .70; Factor III, .75). The GHQ-12 shows adequate reliability and validity in the Spanish population. Therefore, the GHQ-12 can be used with efficacy to assess people's overall psychological well-being and to detect non-psychotic psychiatric problems. Additionally, our results confirm that the GHQ-12 can best be thought of as a multidimensional scale that assesses several distinct aspects of distress, rather than just a unitary screening measure.
authors.affiliation: Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain. mpsanche@psi.ucm.es
authors.forename: María del Pilar
authors.initials: Mdel P
authors.lastname: Sánchez-López
authors.forename: Virginia
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Dresch
mesh_terms: D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D006304:Health Status; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006801:Humans; D011159:Population Surveillance / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013030:Spain / Q000453:epidemiology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires